Obama wants war plan against ISIS by the end of the week

Top US officials say President Barack Obama wants to decide American strategy for combating extremist group Islamic State’s strongholds in Syria. Yet the administration is still scrambling to understand the goals and limits of potential military action.

Top members of the Obama administration have held meetings this
week to surmise how expanding a military campaign against Islamic
State (IS, formerly known as ISIS) in eastern Syria might play
out. American airstrikes have already occurred against IS targets
in Iraq, where the jihadist group controls large swaths of the
west and north.

Unresolved issues among top national security officials,
according to
The Daily Beast, include reliability of American intelligence
on IS areas in Syria; what the goals and limits of airstrikes
would be; and how any military action could be justified legally,
politically, and diplomatically.

The purpose of high-level meetings at the White House this week
was “to convince one man, Barack Obama,” one
administration official told Daily Beast, to follow through with
tough talk directed at IS and order strikes against it. Obama
held back in ordering strikes against Syrian President Bashar
Assad’s forces roughly one year ago during the height of
international tension over the civil war in Syria.

But what strategy will come of the talks, whether military
strikes will be the lynchpin or not, is yet unknown. Both the
Pentagon and US intelligence agencies are said to be developing
options for Obama and top officials, according to two anonymous
administration officials.

In attempts to gain more intelligence fast, the US has already
flown surveillance aircraft over Syria, it was reported earlier
this week by The Wall Street Journal.

US officials said this week that there has been no
consultation or coordination with the Syrian government,
another IS opponent, nor any US allies fighting the militant
group on the ground in Syria.

“Nobody has talked to us about carrying out airstrikes [in
Syria], up to this moment,” Hadi AlBahra, president of the
Syrian National Coalition, a group of Assad opponents, told The
Daily Beast. “If I were in their place, I would talk to us,
because we are on the ground and we are in a better position to
tell them where the ISIS forces are.”

AlBahra added that the US should work with moderate Assad
opponent Free Syrian Army “to make sure there will be no
collateral damage, to make sure they are targeting the right
spots and the right forces. Coordinating operations with the FSA
on the ground will also bring more success to the entire
operation. Right now, the Free Syrian Army are the only ones
fighting ISIS inside Syria.”

But without sufficient intelligence, it’s difficult to know how
strikes would impact IS - which has rapidly gained strength since
developing during the Syrian civil war and splitting from
Al-Qaeda before pushing through parts of Iraq in recent months.

In addition, how would strikes affect the Syrian government?
Syria’s foreign minister said this week that the United States
must not enter Syrian air space.

“There are a lot of risks if you don’t have sufficient
information,” said Brian Katulis, of the Center for American
Progress. “There was no clear pathway of options that the
U.S. and this president seemed willing to take to stop this civil
war from spiraling out of control and causing the collapse of
Syria. Now we’ve got a failed state and Assad still in
power.”

The Daily Beast reported that Obama is expected to be presented
with one option known previously in Afghanistan conversations as
counterterrorism plus: a drone and air campaign against IS in
Syria.

The Obama administration must also consider Congress and whether
the legislative body would need to authorize any option the
administration eventually chooses, such as a sustained air
campaign.

As RT previously reported,
the US government is tracking as many as 300 Americans supposedly
fighting with Islamic State. Washington is worried that
radicalized foreign fighters could become a risk to the US if
they return to employ skills learned overseas to carry out
attacks.

It was reported
this week that a 33-year-old American,Douglas
McAuthur McCain, was killed over the weekend in Syria while
battling alongside Islamic State against members of a separate
opposition group. Family members confirmed his passing to NBC
News, and senior US officials acknowledged that they were aware
of the man’s death.

In addition, it was reported Thursday that a second American died
fighting with IS.
Abdirahmaan Muhumed died in the same battle that took
McCain’s life. They were reportedly friends in high school near
Minneapolis.

Islamic State, as well as the Syrian government, were called
out by a UN panel in a new report for committing crimes
against humanity during the civil war in Syria.

"In areas of Syria under ISIS control, particularly in the
north and northeast of the country, Fridays are regularly marked
by executions, amputations and lashings in public squares,"
the Independent International Commission of Inquiry said in a
statement. “Bodies of those killed are placed on display for
several days, terrorizing the local population. Women have been
lashed for not abiding by ISIS’s dress code. In Ar-Raqqah,
children as young as 10 are being recruited and trained at ISIS
camps. ISIS has forcibly displaced Kurdish communities in
northern Syria. Journalists and other media workers are
systematically targeted.”